As prepared to take the stand in the civil fraud trial that could destroy his business empire, the ex-president and his attorneys settled on a strategy built on spite and unbridled antagonism. According to two sources familiar with the matter and another person briefed on Team Trump\u2019s legal strategies, Trump and his lawyers want to intentionally provoke the judge into a nuclear-level overreaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They certainly seem to be carrying out the plan<\/a> on Monday. Trump dodged questions and ranted about this \u201chaters\u201d while on the witness stand, leading Judge Arthur Engoron to scold him repeatedly and push the former president\u2019s attorneys to rein in their client. \u201cI beseech you to control him if you can,\u201d Engoron implored. \u201cIf you can\u2019t, I will. I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n An explosive response from Engoron could include ordering Trump to be remanded to a jail cell for the night. The judge in the case had already imposed a gag order on Trump, warning him to refrain from attacks on the judge\u2019s staff. Late last week, the order was expanded<\/a> to also include Trump\u2019s attorneys. Trump has still shown<\/a> a brazen willingness to violate it repeatedly. And as bizarre as it may sound, there are attorneys and political advisers to Trump who have told the former president that a so-called \u201cremand order\u201d to put him in custody for repeatedly breaching the judge\u2019s rulings might be a good thing \u2014 both legally and politically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ex-president\u2019s legal advisers had long ago told Trump that his chances of winning at trial are close to zero \u2014 hence, their scorched-earth, \u201cFyre Festival<\/a>\u201d-style courtroom performances. According to the three sources, several Trump attorneys and other key allies have advised him that the more the New York judge supposedly \u201coverreacts\u201d \u2014 including perhaps remanding Trump \u2014 the better their case for an appeal will be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI call it the Chicago 7 disruption strategy,\u201d Alan Dershowitz, the celebrity lawyer who defended then-President Trump during his first impeachment, tells Rolling Stone<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen a defendant honestly believes he can\u2019t possibly get a fair trial from the judge, one of the tactics is to antagonize the judge to a point of causing reversible errors,\u201d Dershowitz says. \u201cThat is what happened in the Chicago 7 case, and I was one of the lawyers on the appeal in that case. Abbie Hoffman provoked Judge Hoffman to such a degree that the judge made mistake after mistake. And courts of appeal often reverse convictions or verdicts when the judge has made serious errors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In recent weeks, the former president and some of his lawyers in the New York civil fraud trial have discussed the likelihood of Engoron very aggressively<\/em> responding to Trump team\u2019s strategy of relentless hostility and defiance<\/a>. The tactics have included attacks on Engoron\u2019s court clerk, filibustering the prosecution\u2019s witnesses with repetitive questions<\/a>, and raising legal arguments the judge had already specifically prohibited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This has included Trump asking his legal advisers if the judge would, or could, actually go so far as to send him to jail for a short time, the sources tell Rolling Stone<\/em>. Trump has been told such an order is probably unlikely \u2014 though Engoron has publicly put the option on the table. This is one reason why Trump and his counselors have kept up with their brazen strategy of infuriating a judge who has openly threatened the former president with possible jail time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The legal team has further assured Trump that even if he were remanded, they would likely be able to deploy a variety of legal tactics to keep him from spending any time behind bars. According to two other sources with knowledge of the situation, some Trump advisers have already reached out to certain outside attorneys to see if those lawyers would be interested in joining that potential fight to keep Trump out of jail. (Some of those lawyers have preemptively turned Team Trump down.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, there have been recent conversations among some of Trump\u2019s 2024 campaign brass of how much of an immediate fundraising boost they would enjoy, if a New York judge were to try to put Trump in a cell for even a minute. \u201cAll the cash in the world,\u201d one Trump political adviser says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the course of the New York civil trial of Trump and his eponymous real-estate organization, Judge Engoron has been visibly enraged by the behavior of the ex-president and his lawyers in court. This has resulted in a limited gag order following Trump\u2019s derogatory remarks about Engoron\u2019s staff, as well as expensive sanctions on both the legal team and Trump. Engoron has made clear that if Trump continues to flagrantly violate his gag order, the judge may take \u201csevere\u201d action, including possibly remanding Trump to jail. Last week, the judge said he and his office have been flooded with \u201chundreds\u201d of examples of harassment and threats during this trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump has been surrounded by lawyers who for years have begged him to show restraint or caution. In this case, he is buttressed by attorneys who appear more than willing to join in his preferred public relations, legal, and political tactics of innuendo and mudslinging. In just the past few weeks, Trump\u2019s attorneys have variously suggested that his former accountant may have \u201cmental health\u201d issues and accused his former attorney Michael Cohen of perjury<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Friday, Chris Kise, Trump\u2019s lead attorney in the case, appeared to test the judge\u2019s patience by once again by attacking his court clerk, Allison Greenfield, with claims about her \u201cexcessive political donations\u201d from a Wisconsin man who describes himself as \u201cApplying the 69th Amendment to the Internet!\u201d in his Twitter bio<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kise flagged a Breitbart article<\/a> that he claimed \u201craises questions of impartiality\u201d against Trump. The article describes a complaint made by Brock Fredin, who has frequently attacked Engoron and his clerk with crass insults<\/a> on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fredin\u2019s attacks had previously helped to land Trump in trouble with Judge Engoron when he posted a screenshot from the man\u2019s Twitter account insulting Greenfield on his Truth Social platform. That move earned Trump a gag order and a warning from the judge to steer clear of insulting court staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Kise appears undaunted by Engoron\u2019s warnings that he is \u201cvery protective\u201d of his staff. On Thursday, he chastised Greenfield<\/a> for passing notes to the judge, which prompted Engoron to expand Trump\u2019s gag order<\/a> to include his attorneys. The next day, Kise pressed ahead<\/a> with gripes about Greenfield in the Breitbart article and claimed that the \u201cdefense will have to give serious consideration to seeking a mistrial\u201d because of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Trump\u2019s attorneys stoke the judge\u2019s ire, it\u2019s unclear how far Engoron would likely go with Trump himself should he continue to ignore the gag order against him. Various lawyers, including some retained by Trump, privately concede that if Trump were an ordinary citizen, he likely would have been remanded by now for his behavior. But Trump is not an ordinary citizen. His position as the 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner and leader of the Republican Party would make any decision to impose jail time, even if brief, extremely politically fraught.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As prepared to take the stand in the civil fraud trial that could destroy his business empire, the ex-president and his attorneys settled on a strategy built on spite and unbridled antagonism. According to two sources familiar with the matter and another person briefed on Team Trump\u2019s legal strategies, Trump and his lawyers want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-featured","category-international"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/b127d0ec975054a710ea88c458c5759d.webp?fit=630%2C420&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12615,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12609\/revisions\/12615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}